Page 48

My shadows wantedto collide with him.

Desperately.

I didn’t understand it,but I had to get to him, no matter the cost.

Phantom paced restlessly behind me, occasionally nudging me with his cold nose and trying to convince me to hop onto his back once more. But I had a sudden surge of confidence and sure-footedness—I would cross the rest of this perilous ocean on my own, and not risk my best friend as I did it.

I sprinted forward, muscles straining and balance rocking as I fought to stay upright and keep Aleksander in my line of sight. The magic grew thicker. The heat was just short of suffocating. But I was getting closer.

Twenty feet.

Ten feet.

Five feet—

I stretched out my hand.

And as soon as my fingers brushed Aleksander’s arm, the world around us began to…bloom.

Like the forest I’d first found him in, everything around me—the withered grass, the scraggly roots of long-dead flowers, a nearby tree previously devoid of all its leaves—exploded into life, filling the air with a blinding brightness.

Once again, it all died just as quickly…but with the death came a relative calmness. The ground no longer trembled. The light stopped crackling and shooting out from Aleksander’s body, leaving us in a twilight-hued silence. Not a peaceful quiet, but one heavy with the possibility of more to come, like the silent note in a symphony just before an impending crescendo. I kept waiting for it to come—the clash of cymbals, the rising notes before a bone-rattling climax…

But as I gripped Aleksander’s arm more tightly, the silence stretched on and on, until finally, I trusted it would stay.

For now.

Aleksander kept his head bowed and his eyes closed. The light-filled cracks on his skin had mostly faded, save for a few on his arms, and one that ran the length of one side of his face, right through the middle of his right eye. Traces of magic still bled from those fissures, dripping down his cheeks like tears made of liquid gold.

Clinging more tightly to his arm—mostly for the sake of balance, now—I looked around.

The ground was buckled in a few places, but otherwise, no worse for the wear. A few shallow cracks remained…and there were little shoots of green sprouting up through several of them. A few of the shoots even had flower buds on them.

I was almost certain none of that had been here before.

So apparently, everythinghadn’tdied as quickly as it bloomed.

Somehow, this struck me as one of the strangest things I’d seen yet: A living garden taking root in a world meant for the dead.

What the hell was going on?

Shakily—cautiously—I released my hold on Aleksander and rose to my full height. I heard voices and turned to see Zayn, Thalia, and our two remaining soldiers standing a short distance away.

They were all staring at me—except for Thalia, who was staring at the budding flowers.

Zayn moved first. He looked me over as he approached, but for once, he seemed entirely speechless. After struggling and failing to find words, he walked right past me and instead hurried to Aleksander’s side. Rowen and Farren immediately followed him.

The king didn’t stir at their approach, remaining in his kneeled position with his head bowed.

Was he back to sleep for another year now?

I was so busy watching him—and occasionally sweeping another confused, disbelieving stare at the garden growing around him—that Thalia’s sudden appearance at my side startled me.

“Necromancy…” she said, her gaze drifting once more over the blooming garden. “And yet, you seem to be helping him bring life, rather than death.”

“But I didn’tdoanything,” I said, breathlessly.

“You didn’t use any spells against him?”